I felt that the earlier class on Office Politics 101was good, but a little too junior for some people. I have therefore opened a more advanced class targeted more towards MBAs, mid-level managers, junior executives and people who work in high pressure, high performance environments, but have not yet reached the very senior levels of management.
How does a person with poor hand-eye coordination improve their golf skills? Or even begin on the journey towards moderate-ability-in-golf-dom?
Oooh, follow-up. If you’re a girl, do you need to be good at golfing?
Why bother? You aren’t practicing for The Augusta National. I’m sure plenty of clients and executives would love to have a regular golf partner who doesn’t have to pretend to lose to them every week.
Doesn’t have to be golf, but finding an activity that rich business people enjoy - golf, tennis, sailing, race car driving, drinking expensive scotch whisky, whatever. You meet other successful people by hanging out in places where successful people hang out.
Let me put it another way. I’ve found that any sort of general public industry, or college “networking” event or happy hour tends to be frequented by the last sort of people you would ever want to network with. Vendors. Headhunters. Salespeople - people who want something but are not in a position to give anything. If I’m hiring someone or a company for a project, I probably already know who to call and it probably won’t be those people getting drunk on open bar cocktails.
No. Because in all seriousness, if you are conducting business based on Boys Club network connections (such as golfing), they probably aren’t interested in having women there.
What you will find in this class is that many questions you might think are silly or facicious, actually have real legitimate business world answers.
Delegate to the extent possible, and follow up on the work.
Promote from within, when possible.
From sad experience: when interviewing someone for a position, have a witness as to what was said, preferably somebody from HR if at all feasible.
Review performance regularly. Never hesitate to tell somebody when they are doing well or poorly.
Never treat people differently just because they may be of a different race or ethnicity. I’ve seen many managers shoot themselves in the foot because they were afraid to tell a minority employee about poor performance. People need feedback, and it’s not about race, folks.
Why? I can’t imagine a scenario where you can hold someone to something they said in an interview. If someone exaggerates their skills or lies about their qualifications, you can still fire them for poor performance, right?
I thought it was meant more in terms of filing suit (or threatening to), such as due to discrimination.
Actually, I live about a block from the Augusta National and would lurve to play there. But in all honesty, I think if you’re going to take up rich people sports, you should probably be at least decent, but not a rockstar, at them. You don’t want to embarrass yourself.
Fairly common sense stuff from a management perspective. From an office politics perspective, “performance” is tends to be fixed. The people who evaluate you tend to form an opinion based on their pre-conceived biases and they tend to manage people (and you) based on that opinion.
In my experience, “delegation” typically consists of being given a project and then the delegator washes their hands of it. If it is a success, they will take the credit, but also continue to use you a resource for completing projects. If it goes bad (or they lose control of the project) then you become a convenient scapegoat for all their fears and incompetance. Sometimes, they might even try to reinsert themselves here and there (usually resulting in a lot of frustration).
The key is for you as a manager to “own” the project. You have to be the guy the clients come to first. The guy who knows all the details about everything.
Companies don’t keep people because they “like” them. They keep them because the people who making hiring and firing decisions need them.
I don’t think that is realistic or necessary in most cases.
Learn to spot the poseurs and apply appropriate countermeasures.
Not particularly useful advice without more detail (ironically, a classic sign of poseurism). How does one spot them and what are the countermeasures?
Keep in mind that that in this day and age of “startups”, “serial entrepreneurs”, title inflation, and just plain ole people jumping jobs every 2 years, the odds of the managing director or vice president they just hired to run your group actually knowing what he is doing are probably slim. But nevertheless, because of his education and credentials, that will not stop him from having an opinion on everything. Think Ryan the Temp from The Office when he got promoted to VP.
That’s like if you have to ask how much it costs you can’t afford it. :rolleyes:
Maybe I’ll start the next thread illuminating my vast knowledge of the ethereal world of poseurism. We can analyze some examples on this message board, starting with you. 
I thought that as well, right up to the point where an Alaska Native woman accused me of bias during the interview for an admin position (we used a standard set of questions for all candidates). It ended up being a big time sucker to knock down. After that, I kept the door open during interviews and usually had someone sit in with me.
mrsmith537 is unpleasant enough on a consistent basis to be absolutely believable as a mid-level executive. And I say that with love.
I took the liberty of reporting you for personal attacks and for threadshitting.
A good mid-level manager knows how to use the faceless, unthinking beurocracy of his organization to dispense with undesireables.
If you have something legitimate to contribute, I suggest you do so, or leave.
Ya Think? :rolleyes:
I would describe myself more as a mid-level manager who works clients who are VP and C-level executives.
Although **Nadir **is right about one thing. I haven’t played golf in over ten years.
You seem to have me confused with someone who actually knows who you are. So I looked at some of your prior posts just to figure out who I am dealing with.
Unless it’s part of your IRL actual name, your user name means the opposite of “zenith”, so clearly you identify yourself as someone at the bottom. Given your interest in guns, technology like Linux, JD Tennessey whiskey over Scotch and the fact that you are cheap, I would assume that you self-identify with the common folk and are not being ironic.
You write posts like:
Makes me think you have a general chip on your shoulder towards authority and institutions and well…people. Probably view most politicians and corporate types as idiots and charlatans. I don’t know what your education is like, but your signiture “Don’t believe everything you think.” implies you think that are more attuned to the world around you. Of course, you are “keeping it real” so that entitles you to be as belligerent and profane as you like.
Why would I think that someone like you would find me as anything but “unpleasent”?
msmith537, this is not the Pit. If you want to lay out your gripes with another poster, that’s the place to do it, not here.
Everyone: Stop it now, or there will be warnings.
Ellen Cherry
Moderator
That was not my intent. I simply felt his unwarrented hostility towards me had some practical relevance to the discussion.